Spain warns over deficit goal amid new protests

Madrid: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy admitted Sunday it would be difficult for the government to meet its deficit reduction targets despite a raft of austerity measures, as thousands of disabled people staged a noisy protest over cuts to their benefits.

“It is very complicated to reduce the deficit by 2.6 points in a context of recession, with as many problems with revenue and such high financing costs,” Rajoy said in an interview published in La Razon newspaper.

“Spain was asked to make a very difficult effort, to go from 8.9 percent to 6.3 percent in only one year,” said Rajoy, who has until now pledged to respect the public deficit target called for by the European Union.

“Our goal is to do things well and we will see what will happen at the end of the year,” he said.

Spain, the fourth-largest economy in the eurozone, is engaged in a deep austerity programme and is seeking to recover 150 billion euros ($195 billion) between 2012 and 2014, through both tax increases and budget cuts.

The task is all the harder as Spain slid back into recession at the end of 2011, less than two months after re-emerging from the previous one.